His Place
by delena1997
Summary: "Suddenly, the man you once hated is everything to you. You don't even know how, or when it happened." She stopped and sighed, staring at the doorframe. "Then?" Caroline asked quietly, knowing what the answer would be. She shrugged. "And then you fall in love with them."


_Companion piece to 'Awakened' (you don't have to have read it.)_

_Expert from Chapter 15 added to and continued. _

_Klaus/Caroline perspective._

_:)_

* * *

"Hello."

Caroline knew that voice. She desperately wanted to pretend she didn't but she had that voice memorized – from the charming accent to the way he drawled out words and that damn smirk that went with it.

And those eyes. They danced and they sparkled and they drew her in. Of _course_ they did.

Taking a deep breath, she turned to look at him, keeping her eyes solid blocks of slanting green ice. He was the enemy, the common goal uniting so many people together. He was the one who had to be destroyed – and for some reason her heart constricted in her chest at the thought of him just not being there. The way he walked up to her and engaged her in conversation like one human being to another, the way he made her think, the way she scoffed at his words, but somewhere deep inside her they actually hit home. A world without him was unfathomable. Not just for her personally, but for the supernatural world too.

"Hi." She said frostily.

"Caroline." He said, a rough pain skirting around the edges of his voice.

"Why did you do it?" she snapped, standing up to face him down. "Why did you want his body?"

"Because you love him." Klaus said, his voice sad and his eyes far away. "And I wanted to know, just for a little while, what it felt like to be loved by you."

Caroline gaped at him, her mouth falling open unattractively. This man, the one so many people thought as evil, was capturing her in a spell of words and for once, she didn't want to fight it.

"You don't have to use magic and lies and manipulation to be loved by someone."

"No." he said, staring her down intensely. "_You_ don't, but for someone like me it's all I can count on."

Her heart ached for him. He was alone in the world. Not fully trusting of anyone, always with his guard up high. He had been double-crossed and betrayed so many times there was nothing he could count entirely on.

"What are you doing here, Klaus?" she asked wearily. "You have so many faces. I don't know who I'm talking to." With that, she backed away and unable to throw a look of disgust his way, she turned around and walked away.

"Caroline." He called after her. She stopped. "I think the better question is why _you_ are here."

She whirled around and stomped back towards him. "You got your boyfriend back." He said bitterly. "Yet you sit alone on a park bench in the town square."

"I wanted to be alone." She snapped.

"Nobody wants to be alone, Caroline. The world is different when you have no one to share it with."

Dumbstruck, she didn't know what to say next. "And that's why you have hybrids." She spoke slowly, waiting for him to contradict her. "Because you can't stand the thought of being alone."

"One thousand years on this earth and the only person who can barely stomach a conversation with me is you." His eyes bored into hers, the intensity of his suspicion blazed out more prominent than anything else. "A millennia of lifetimes and more faces than I can count and none have truly stuck out in a long time. Other than you."

"There are moments when you seem more human than the rest of us."

"There's still something redeemable in me, Caroline. I just have to convince you." He said, pleading with her almost desperately. She hated the way he said her name. She hated the way he smirked at her. She hated his ability to somehow wind his way into her life and into her mind. And somehow, into the beginnings of her heart.

"I have a tendency to latch onto hopeless cases." She snapped dryly. "It's never worked out well before."

Klaus stayed silent for a while. Caroline slowly began to walk away, turning back just before she turned around and left completely.

"You don't have to be alone forever."

Her words shocked him and sliced through him deeper than he'd ever thought possible. He didn't know what to call the blonde walking away from him. She wasn't an enemy, wasn't an ally. There was no way she could be classed as a friend, but way down, right in his gut, he had a feeling that he could trust her.

Several hundred meters away, Caroline had reached the same conclusion.

* * *

"Okay, look." Caroline stormed up to him just as he was passing through the Grill. "What's your objective here?" she snapped. Her voice was desperate. She so desperately wanted to think he had some ulterior motive behind everything.

"Why are you asking?" Klaus asked curiously. "Why bother talking to me? I thought you didn't like me."

Her eyes almost burned him with their anger. "I don't like you!" she exclaimed suddenly.

The sheer bluntness of her statement made them both stop and stare at each other. Although the both stopped, only one of them knew her statement wasn't entirely true.

"I don't like how you trick me into thinking there's another side to you." She amended hopelessly.

"It's not always a trick, Caroline. There's another side to everyone. Part of us is hidden away." He said, staring her down.

"Like the moon." She murmured subconsciously.

"What?" he said, hoping he'd heard her right.

"Part of us is hidden away. " Caroline said softly. "Like the moon. We see it for a few hours most nights, and every so often we get the whole picture, right before it slips away from us."

Klaus cocked his head to the side, staring at her in a new light. There were so many layers to Caroline Forbes and he was determined to get to know her. Even one of her layers would be enough. To say to people he had known a girl like her was all he wished for at this moment.

He nodded in agreement.

"I don't like you. I don't like your smile." She stated, an involuntary lightness dancing in her eyes. He started, her words barely registering with him. "I don't like the way you drawl out your words and stare me down like you know me better than I know myself."

He leant back on the bar, grinning at her. She wasn't smiling at him. She wasn't listing the things she liked about him – quite the opposite, but there was s strange playfulness shadowing her tone, a lightness brightening her emerald eyes. She was remarkable.

"I don't like how only I can see this part of you."

"What part of me is it you see exactly?"

She stared at him, setting his body alight with one look. "A different part."

She grabbed her purse off of the counter. Her jacket sleeve slid up slightly revealing her delicate diamond bracelet he had given her for her birthday.

He waited until she was almost at the door before calling out softly. "You still wear the bracelet."

Caroline stopped for a second just outside the door. He knew she had heard him. His eyes were fixed on her as she moved out of his line of sight, marking her movements and doing everything he could to convince her that maybe, this wasn't a trick. Maybe this was just who he really was.

* * *

"Dance with me." Klaus commanded quietly.

"No." Caroline replied simply.

"Dance with me." He asked again. "It'd be rude to ignore the music."

She snorted reluctantly; placing her white gloved hand into his open one, and allowed him to lead her onto the dance floor.

"You never told me what your aim is." She said formally, the strange _friendship_ that had appeared between them was pushed to the side in the presence of her friends.

"Did it occur to you that I had no other aim?" he asked hopefully, a lopsided smirk slipping onto his face.

"It did." She nodded her head, pretending to look serious. "But then I remembered who I was thinking about."

"Ah Caroline," He said, spinning her away from his body and twirling her back to she was suddenly encased in his arms. "I just want to know you Caroline. Is it so hard to believe?"

"Sometimes." Caroline said softly, her mind turmoil of thoughts. "Then I get little glimpses of somebody else."

They danced in silence, moving further and further away from the formalized dances and slipping unconsciously into the slow swaying of bodies.

"He's real you know."

"Who is?" she asked, bewildered.

"The man you see." Klaus whispered in her ear. "He's real, I promise you. Don't forget that."

And with that, he disappeared in a blur, leaving her alone on a crowded dance floor.

* * *

"Hey." She said casually, sitting down beside Klaus against a tree near the Falls. He looked up from his notepad and started in shock.

"Hello, love." He said out of reflex, smiling slightly at her.

Caroline looked away, shaking her head, trying desperately not to show him how much his easy going tone and the way the normally sarcastic pet name slipped off his lips in such a sweet way had affected her.

"How did you find me?" he asked, turning a page and beginning a new sketch.

"I didn't mean to." She shrugged helplessly and gazed at the tumbling cascade of water. "I like it out here. I just sort of ended up here."

"I do too." He replied, utterly transfixed in his drawing. She watched his hand glide across the page at inhuman speed and the confidence that must have accumulated over centuries of marking down his memories in ink.

"I can go." She offered awkwardly. She didn't want to interrupt him. His face was calm and serene; it was as if this was the only peace he would ever find in the world.

Klaus met her eyes.

"You don't have to."

She nodded, hugging her knees to herself and staring at the water. "Did you know the place before?" she asked curiously.

Klaus smiled at a long forgotten memory. "My home was just over the hill. I used to come out here a sketch. My father," he chuckled humorlessly. "He never approved."

"Your home?"

"One thousand years ago." Klaus said softly, setting his pen down. "It's almost exactly the same. I've been back here more than you would imagine. I used to just come back here and sit here for a few hours. Just remembering."

Caroline cocked her head to the side and smiled warmly at him. "What are you drawing?"

His eyes sparkled as he picked up his pen and added the finishing touches to the parchment in front of him. "I was drawing the waterfall, but then you sat in front of it."

Caroline's eyes widened and she began to stand up. "I'll move if you like…"

He stared at her, making her stop and look at him, seeking answers. He silently held out the picture to her.

She took it cautiously, gasping in delight as the image registered in her mind. The waterfall and surrounding woods were sketched in perfect detail, but somehow, the small figure curled up in front of a tree was what caught your attention. She was sketched perfectly, her eyes shining as she gazed at the falls and her mouth curved up in a small smile at something, probably something Klaus had said.

"It's beautiful." She complimented, handing it back to him.

"Keep it." He shrugged. "I want you to have it."

She wanted to deny his offer, but like the other picture he had given her, it was simply too perfect to throw away.

"Thank you."

They sat in silence for a long time, watching the water fall over the rocks.

"Is it really exactly the same?" she asked in wonder, gazing around her. She liked the idea, that no matter how far she went – and how much the world changed – there would always be a place that was eternal.

"More or less." He shrugged, glancing at her. "The waterfall is bigger, deeper. The trees are different trees…" He sighed and leant back against the tree they were both companionably leaning against. "It's still the same. The smells. The sounds. It's home."

Caroline listened to the man beside her talk, slowly opening up and letting someone glimpse the person underneath his cold exterior.

* * *

"So did I convince you?" Klaus asked quietly after hours of sitting against the tree by the Falls.

Caroline looked at him, utterly bewildered. "Convince me of what?"

His grin slipped. "I told you I had to convince you there was something redeemable inside of me."

She stared at him emotionlessly. They stayed locked in a silent stare-down before Caroline was the one to look away. She leant her head back against the tree trunk.

"I never stopped believing that you know." She confessed.

"No." He shook his head sharply. "I didn't know that."

Caroline nodded. She was so confused. Out here, in the middle of the darkening woods and in the light of the fading sun, Klaus was acting like a man she could fall for. But the second the woods no longer hid them from judging eyes, that man would disappear from her and she always wondered when she would get the chance to see him again.

"Can I walk you home?" he asked, like a true old-school gentleman.

She laughed, rolling her eyes. "You don't need to walk me home."

Klaus smiled his crooked grin. "I know, but we both know this friendship can't last forever Caroline. I want to spend as much time with you as possible."

"Who says it can't last forever?"

"Caroline, your friends want to kill me." Klaus pointed out sadly.

"Killing you would kill them all. It would kill us all." She said shakily. Not only would Klaus die, but also she would be torn from her life before she could even live it. The thought was terrifying. Spending forever on the other side, with nobody to comfort you, was too much to handle.

He noticed her slight fear and slowly, hesitantly, cupped her face in her hands, staring deep into her eyes.

"I won't let them kill me." He promised sincerely. "I will run and I will disappear, and I won't be doing it for me – I've accepted the fact that death could come as soon as they work out how to kill me. Living a thousand years is a long time, living only eighteen however, is impossibly short."

She stared at him, her breath suddenly wanted to come faster and her still heart wanted to flutter straight out of her chest.

"I won't let them kill me Caroline, and for once, I'm not thinking of myself when I say that."

Caroline's heart tightening in her chest. A feeling no words can describe over took her, and suddenly, she felt a deep, gut-wrenching urgency for him to stay here. The world is a big place, the moment he left Mystic Falls that would be it; it would be unlikely she would find him. He would be the one to find her.

* * *

"Okay. What's your deal?" Elena snapped at her, grinning the second she opened the door to allow Caroline in.

Caroline was startled out of her reverie. She stared at Elena, knowing that she knew better than anyone what she was feeling. Elena had fought her feelings for Damon for so long, she had denied feeling anything and then suddenly, in a pure, undiluted, moment of clarity, she had finally let herself feel what her heart had decided a long time ago.

"My deal?" she said, acting dumb, brushing it off with a laugh and a smile.

"Caroline." Elena said gently, dragging her over to the sofa and shoving her down on to it.

Caroline buried her face in her hands and groaned. "How did you do it?"

Elena sank back into the seat cushions and wrapped her arms around a pillow. "Do what?"

"How did you do it _all_? How did you look past the bad in him? How did you convince yourself you weren't a dreadful person? How did you fall in love with him?" she asked desperately. Elena's eyes widened considerably, maybe not to do with her semi-confession but that she had so readily opened herself up to the possibility.

"I fell in love like you fall asleep." Elena started, smiling. "Slowly, then _all _at once."

Caroline stared at her, thinking hard. Thinking about every moment they had shared.

"But how did you _decide_?" she asked, frustrated. "How do you decide something like _that_?"

Elena sighed and frowned. "You have the one that's good for you. He's everything you wanted as a kid, and suddenly you have that crazy, sweet love that makes your heart flutter and you think nothing will ever change. It's innocent and pure and has the new excitement that you get from something like that."

Caroline nodded along, wrapping a throw blanket around her tightly.

"Then you have the one you hate. You detest him; to you, he's everything bad in the world. There is nothing that could make you change your mind. You want him as far away as possible." Elena was laughing now, giggling with her face crushed against the pillow. "Then so quickly that you don't notice, the hatred is gone. Suddenly, the man you once hated is everything to you. You don't even know how, or when it happened." She stopped and sighed, staring at the doorframe.

"Then?" Caroline asked quietly, knowing what the answer would be.

Elena shrugged. "And then you fall in love with them."

"Slowly, and then all at once." Caroline repeated tenderly.

"The one who's good for you is the easy choice. It's safe, and if you're as scared as I was, that's who you choose."

"And the other one?"

"He challenges you. He's not afraid to push you, but he knows exactly how far to push. He makes you question everything. He'll make your heart jump right out of your chest. He'll make to feel electric. He'll see how you feel about him before you even do yourself."

"So he's the best thing for me?" she asked curiously, and then blushed when she caught Elena's knowing looking. "I mean, best thing for us. You know. In general."

Elena shook her head, smirking, and looking way too much like Damon than should be allowed.

"So he's the worst?" Caroline asked, outright bewildered.

Elena sighed and closed her eyes with her head back against the headrest.

"He's both. And he's neither. He knows you better than you realize, he can read you like an open book. He can-" Elena carried on, her eyes far away and a small, adoring smile on her face which was most definitely not for her.

She caught Elena's eyes again, noticing the slight fear in them and in that moment, she realized just why Elena had denied feeling anything for Damon for so long.

"He's the only one who can truly break you. He's the only one who can crush you and leave you broken beyond repair. If you know that before you know you love them you know that it's something more. You know it's something else, something you've never experienced before." Caroline had a feeling they weren't talking about things in general terms anymore.

"He's the one that fixed you when you were breaking apart before, and he's the one who's holding you together now. He goes and you're broken, and that's it."

* * *

Caroline was walking slowly through the dark streets of her house when she felt movement behind her and a light tap on her shoulder. She turned around, her guard up and frowning intently when there was nothing there. She faced front again and jumped in fright from Klaus standing directly in front of her. She steadied her breathing and smacked his arm playfully. He burst out laughing and grinned at her.

"Hi." He said, smirking.

"Hey." She smiled automatically.

Klaus looked a way, the laughter dying off his face. "I'm leaving, Caroline."

She froze. "Why?"

He frowned. "Why not?"

"You want Elena human." She said, paining her knowing she was practically keeping Klaus here to use Elena as a blood bag, just so he would be _here_. "You want more hyrbrids."

He shrugged. "I don't need to be alone." He quoted her, his mouth curving upwards. "I decided to try it your way. Without the magic or the lies or the manipulation."

Caroline smiled sadly. "You're not alone here."

"I am, Caroline." He said defeated.

"So what am I?" she asked, hating how desperate she sounded.

"You're Caroline, and you're amazing and you are so special but I'm still who I am." He shook his head at her sadly. "We can't be friends." She frowned slightly at the word 'friends'. He leaned in and wrapped his arms around her tightly, burying his face in her blonde hair. He breathed deeply and stepped away from her. With a sweet, unexpected kiss on her forehead and a sad look, he was gone, vanished into the darkness.

"You told me you'd show me the world." She said, knowing he wouldn't be far enough away for him not to hear her. "Rome. Paris. I think you even said Tokyo." She smiled sadly.

Klaus was back in her line of sight, standing far way from her. "Then come and find me there one day."

She crossed her eyes defiantly. "Don't leave."

"Caroline." He moaned exasperatedly. "I'm not who you think I am! I'm _evil, _and you're_ not._."

She scoffed, and winked at him, just because she knew it would get to him. "You're not though. Nobody's really evil."

"And what's taught you that?" he asked skeptically.

"Past experience." She shrugged.

Klaus chuckled and was back in front of her in less than a second. He hugged her again, and this time, her strong arms wrapped around him and her face pressed into his chest.

"Goodbye, Caroline."

She had been standing in the darkness, staring into the still night when it hit her. Her sudden, undiluted moment of clarity wasn't that she loved him.

It was that she _could_.

* * *

She hurtled towards the Michelson Manor, and burst through the door, slowing down to a walk, searching through the house until she found him, standing, a lot like she had been, staring blankly into the dark night.

"Don't leave." Caroline said again as she stood beside him on the balcony, leaning on the railing.

"I don't want to, but I can't stay here. This is the origin of almost everything supernatural. We rarely find something that fixes us to places, especially not here, where it all began. Every vampire will pass through here, as will every werewolf and hybrid and witch. But we don't stay here, Caroline."

"Damon and Elena-" she started, utterly confused.

Klaus chuckled. "Are downright bizarre. Damon finds his way back here every few years and hides in the shadows, and now, he's found his place in the world, he stays put. He'll follow Elena wherever she goes."

Caroline glanced at him. "So that's what draws us here? Finding our place in the world?"

He shook his head. "No. Finding our place keeps us somewhere. We keep searching until we find that place."

"I didn't know that." She murmured.

"Not many do. It was an alteration Iyanna created. I heard her tell Rebekah as a way of comfort. She couldn't stand the thought of us turning into monsters with no place for us to feel at peace. The vampires that are good, truly good, have a way of finding their home."

"So vampires only have one place in the world, and we'll search forever to find it, and until we do, we don't stay in one place?"

"We can stay in one place, but eventually the need for searching pushes us on."

"But you said you didn't want to go. I don't want you to go." She muttered slowly.

Klaus turned to stare at the blonde vampire in front of her in utter amazement. "I don't want to go." He murmured to himself. "Why don't I want to go?"

Klaus was staring at Caroline, hoping somehow she would catch on and say something for him.

"You don't want to leave." She stated, excitement building slowly in her eyes.

He stared out at the stars in wonder. "No."

"Would you," Caroline paused staring at the floor. "Would you find your way back if you did leave?" she asked, embarrassed.

Klaus turned and gently tilted her chin up to bring her face closer to his. "If find my way to you."

Caroline felt like her heart was beating. She felt like it was going to explode out of her chest.

"Can I kiss you?" Klaus murmured, his gaze intense on hers.

Caroline froze, unable to stop her mouth curving into a slow smile. "Yes." She whispered.

He leant forward and finally, after so long dodging and avoidance, pressed his soft lips to hers.


End file.
